Accumulate
by sailor's delight
Summary: Accumulate - (verb) Gather together or acquire an increasing number or quantity of. She was beginning to accumulate in his life. Not that he minded.


Wow it's been a while. I know there are some details here that are only from the past year or so, not a year or two after Chosen or NFA, but just go with it. Let's say the timeline of the shows has been bumped up to present times. Thanks.

* * *

Accumulate: (verb) Gather together or acquire an increasing number or quantity of.

Angel barely registered the door quietly opening to his suite at the Hyperion. He rolled over from his back to lie on his side and squinted at the glowing numbers on the clock on the bedside table. 1:07 am. She always tried to creep into his room quiet as a mouse, but he always heard her. He was just dozing really. He couldn't let himself succumb to deep sleep until he knew she was safe at the hotel, whether it was his room or hers. Buffy was back tonight later than usual and Angel racked his brain to try and remember the patrol schedule for this week. It was Tuesday, so Buffy's squad had the early shift, 9:00 to midnight. Then Vi's squad took over from midnight to 3:00 in the morning. Maybe it was just a busy night. He would ask her in the morning.

He heard her moving about the kitchenette and saw her in his mind's eye grabbing her favorite mug of his and heating up some water. Angel picked up on the subtle smell of peppermint tea. He knew Buffy's post-patrol routine by heart now. She kept a box of her tea in one of his kitchen cabinets. She was beginning to accumulate in his life. More precisely, her things were beginning to accumulate in his living and work space. Not that he minded. But after living in a Spartan-like mansion (alone), an underground apartment (alone), and a spacious abandoned hotel (mostly alone), not to mention the giant office and penthouse Angel had to himself during his stint as CEO of Wolfram & Hart, it took some time to get used to another person sharing his space.

It wasn't like they had gone from seeing each other maybe once a year to suddenly becoming roommates. There were the six or so months that they had traveled the world together finding newly activated slayers from Willow's spell. Sure, Faith and Spike were along for the ride, which made things complicated to say the least. Buffy and Angel had gradually eased themselves back into each other's lives to the point where by the end of the six months they were sharing a hotel room each place they visited. Turns out the curse loophole wasn't so much of a problem anymore.

The four of them made for an interesting time together. After Buffy and her team of slayers saved Angel's ass in that alley behind the Hyperion, Angel was a bit tense, to say the least. Gunn was in a coma for a week, and was still getting weekly visits from a physical therapist. Illyria made it through relatively safely, only to vanish for a couple months. Something she did regularly now. Angel and Spike were beaten to a bloody pulp, and the two of them still had scars remaining from that rainy night.

So yeah, Angel was tense. It took a lot of time and fighting with Buffy before he was comfortable getting close to her again. He was terrified of spending a considerable amount of time with both Buffy and Spike, given their history. He remembers Buffy laughing at him over the rim of her wine glass and assuring him that is was a "non-issue".

"Besides, you haven't noticed them?" she said, referring to Spike and Faith. At his look she added, "They're totally hooking up."

That was before Spike went AWOL for a month in Bangkok because he thought he saw Dru.

Angel's sudden Shanshu put an end to their travels and brought them back to Los Angeles. Spike took one look at Angel and said, "Like I give a toss about that."

He vanished again for a bit after that. Angel thinks he went to London.

The sound of the refrigerator door closing brought Angel back to the present. He knew Buffy was adding a splash of milk and a packet of sugar to her tea. He knew that once her tea was ready, she would softly pad over to his small desk and use his laptop to check her email. Angel heard the tapping of her fingers on the keyboard as she responded to her overflowing Inbox. Angel hated that after a long night of patrolling with a group of inexperienced teenaged slayers she still had work to attend to. Angel tried to help out at the slayer training facility as much as he could, but since he and Gunn had restarted Angel Investigations, his spare time was becoming more and more scarce.

As he heard Buffy finish up the last of her emails and turn off his laptop, Angel smiled to himself. She had her own room at the Hyperion, but Angel could count the nights she spent there on two hands. As a result more and more of her things were creeping their way into his suite. It was something he teased her about, but Angel knew he loved it. Buffy knew it too.

There was the tea in his cabinet, various articles of clothing in his closet and drawers, and a bottle of shampoo and a women's razor in his shower. One night a week or so ago she had plugged her cell phone charger into the outlet behind the nightstand on her side of the bed and had yet to remove it.

Angel heard Buffy walk into the bathroom and close the door. He knew she always took a shower after patrolling. She told him once that she hated the feeling a night in the graveyard left on her skin. Angel remembered shortly after he turned human how he found a foil and plastic packet of birth control pills in one of the bathroom drawers. He saw that there were more than a couple of days she had forgotten that month. Angel knew Buffy could never remember to take a pill at a regular interval each day. She had shrugged and said, "It's for cramps. Slayers can't get pregnant anyways." Then Xander knocked up that Scottish slayer, Renée, disproving that theory. Xander, of all people.

Buffy turned off the shower after a few minutes and Angel heard her get changed into her pajamas, wash her face, comb her hair and brush her teeth. She came out of the bathroom and cursed softy as she banged her foot into something. She had kept the lights off since it was so late.

If he was still awake when she got back from patrol they would watch one of the shows that Angel knew to TiVo for her on the TV in his bedroom. They would watch The Daily Show, or The Office, or reruns of It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia. They had just started watching the first season of Breaking Bad on Netflix. Some nights they wouldn't watch anything at all and would spend the night doing…other activities.

Nights like this one where Angel was barely awake, Buffy would slide into bed and grab her iPad that she left on the nightstand and spend a few minutes reading (currently it was _The Girl who Played with Fire_), checking her Facebook, or reading up on celebrity gossip blogs, one of her guilty pleasures. Angel heard her quietly laugh at something and vaguely wondered what it was. Maybe a picture of her and Faith on Facebook, or something Xander tweeted. Angel still had no idea what a "tweet" was, even though Dawn had explained it to him a few dozen times.

Buffy eventually put the iPad back on the nightstand and sunk down into the pillows, laying on her side facing Angel's broad back. After a minute Angel turned so he was laying on his other side, facing her. He saw Buffy smirk at him in the dark.

"I knew you were awake," she said, still smirking.

Angel just chuckled at her and threw his arm over her hip, pulling her close. He gave her a lingering kiss on her forehead and she snuggled into his chest.

Once on a rare night off, a group of their friends had stayed out all night at a bar. Buffy had more than a few drinks in her, and Angel was surprised to find himself quite tipsy, despite his Irish tolerance for alcohol. It was only in these circumstances that the couple exhibited public displays of affection. Faith, who knew they had been practically living together since Angel turned human, blurted out, "God, get married already!" Angel was amused to see Buffy flip her a rude gesture and drag him off to a different corner of the bar.

Buffy didn't know that Angel overheard a conversation she had with Willow a few weeks ago. The witch had surprised them all when Oz showed up suddenly and the two planned a wedding to be held later in the month. The girls were up late one night planning some last minute details when the conversation turned from Willow's upcoming nuptials to Buffy's current relationship status. The girls were laughing about something and Angel heard Willow ask Buffy something that he couldn't make out. Buffy laughed and said, "I'm not going to move in with a guy unless I'm engaged. Something my dad made me promise when I was little." Angel could almost see her roll her eyes. He knew she wasn't close with her father, but there was something about a little girl making a promise to her dad that had to be respected.

Buffy also didn't know that Angel had a ring. Tucked away in the back corner of a drawer that she had yet to commandeer, Angel had a diamond ring in a velvet box. He bought it the week after he turned human.

Their hectic and busy lives made it difficult for him to find the right time. Valentines Day was coming up though. But Angel didn't want to be cliché. He did have reservations at that Italian restaurant with the three-month long waiting list though…

* * *

I ask not only for reviews but help: I am desperately looking for a fic that I can't find for the life of me. It's a post Chosen fic where Buffy and the gang are running a school to train slayers. It's mostly from the POV of one of the slayers, an original character created by the author. She is on patrol one night when she fights a vampire who turns out to be Angel. One of the subplots is that she and her watcher has a crush on each other and they kiss on New Years Eve. The slayer who ran into Angel on patrol was able to identify him because he was wearing the same ring that Buffy always wears in the story - the claddagh ring. I remember very random details from the story. There was an Angry Birds reference? And Angel was reading a Harry Potter book at one point. And I think he made muffins. I could have sworn the title was something along the lines of "An Ordinary Patrol".

Anyway, fanfiction friends, I beg you for some help. This is driving me crazy!

-sailor's delight


End file.
